On Saturday, the Globe ran an article by Derek DeCloet, who repeated the now familiar view that deregulating local phone service will lead to price increases. Mark Evans described the article as Finally, Someone Gets It. Rob Hyndman joined in and Michael Geist pointed to the article as well.
I disagree with that viewpoint and I am more aligned with Andy Abramson‘s rebuttal. I know that we weren’t going to see vigorous competitive behaviour without the regulatory handcuffs being removed from the incumbents. After all, why would competitors price agressively when incumbent prices were fixed and publicly posted.
Under the rules of the tariffs, the ILECs aren’t even allowed to waive service charges, can’t contact people who had left them, couldn’t create fall promotions to coincide with student moving dates. When the ILECs have retail prices from which it is impossible to vary, how creative does the competition have to get?
There are also more competitors than just the cable companies. While Canadians don’t have access to Skype-In, we do have Vonage, Comwave, Babytel and a wide variety of other VoIP providers. Primus Canada offers both VoIP and conventional telephone competition for residential and business applications. Canada is well beyond a duopoly or oligopoly for substitutable products.
Mark Evans argues that Bell is unlikely to offer across the board price decreases because of the impact on its revenues. He is likely correct on that point. But normal behaviour would suggest targetted price discounting, rather than across the board rate changes. Maybe it will be special rates for students. Maybe it is a promotional deal on your first year of local phone, internet and TV service when you buy a new home or move into a certain apartment building.
More fierce competition for business services – large and small. Bundled promotions: commit to 2 or 3 years on your cell phone and we’ll throw in integrated voice mail. Buy Digital Voice and get half price on Digital Voice Lite.
What kind of pricing will unregulated local prices bring? We’ll have to see. But it is a certainty that under a regulated environment, we weren’t getting lower prices from either the ILECs or their competitors.
The state of competition in residential, business and wireless markets will be the subject of panel discussions at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit in June, featuring business unit leaders from Bell, Rogers, TELUS, Toronto Hydro Telecom, Videotron and Vonage.
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